Fluent Finnish needed

Despite several recent initiatives to develop job advertisement platforms in English, or several cities trying to push forward for a wider use of English, the language requirement is for many foreigners one of the main barriers to employment. Finland is actively looking for solutions, ranging from adding English as an official language at a municipal level in Espoo to individual politicians proposing laws that change the amount of benefits received based on how actively a foreigner is studying Finnish or not.Speaking Finnish is the key to employability, integration and more generally well-being in Finland.

At least in theory. How much do Finnish language skills affect foreigners’ employability? When “fluent” Finnish is required, what does it actually mean? How much are Finnish employers ready to actually consider hiring non-Finnish speakers and develop multilingual teams?

Anu Kytömäki, project worker at Familia, is finishing her thesis on Finnish language and employment. She shared her views on this topic very familiar to her.

Could you introduce yourself and your experience?My name is Anu Kytömäki, and I work here at Familia as a project worker in the Kuljen rinnallasi project. I’m doing my thesis in Diakonia ammattikorkeakoulu and in Finnish it is called “Kielitaidon merkitys maahanmuuttajien työllistymisessä” (The importance of Finnish language skills in foreigner’s integration on the job market). So my main question is how well do you actually need to speak Finnish so you’re able to get a job? What does it mean to have a “good level in Finnish”?

What is your observation when it comes to Finnish language and foreigner’s employment?That the Finnish level is completely bounded to the task. There is no such thing as a “good” or “perfect” general level. You can’t really say “if you speak B1 then you can work”, “B1 is enough to be employed”. The question is what does your task require, what is needed in terms of language level in that new workplace? The second thing is that you can integrate and get a job even if your Finnish level is “insufficient”. You can still enter the job market in Finland and don’t always need that so called “good Finnish” level, that is very subjective.

What are your observations when it comes to Finnish language requirements? Everybody, immigrants looking for a job or HR professionals, have said that the language comes first. No matter how good, educated, or how skilled you are. If you don’t have any language skills, or at least if you can’t sell yourself to your employer, the language comes first, and the skills come after that. It doesn’t mean that if you don’t speak Finnish you can’t have a job. But it depends on how much you can sell yourself. I have had one interviewee, who has been living in Finland for 4 years, and has been at work for 3 years. He learnt the basics of Finnish language in 10 months, alone, and then looked for a job where he could speak basic Finnish and for which he could talk enough about himself. After the interview in basic Finnish, he made a contract with his employer that within a one-month trial period he would learn the necessary vocabulary and will be able to work with the team in Finnish. Every evening he would study construction work vocabulary, that was completely new to him. He studied for a month and succeeded. So, the real question is about communication skills. How are your interlocutors like at work? How open can the colleagues be to a new worker who is learning Finnish while working and still build a relationship with him. If a new worker who is a non-Finnish speaker needs support, how ready are the co-workers to support him? Is there someone ready to share this responsibility with the non-Finnish speaker?

We put the responsibility on the foreigner who doesn’t speak Finnish. What’s the responsibility of the employer? My main observation is that very often, the employers, or people in charge of the recruitment can’t actually answer to “who evaluates the language level?”There is, in most of the cases, no HR or recruiter who is a language professional, a language teacher, or who has a professional ability to evaluate language skills. Often the language certificates are of no use, because the recruiters don’t know how to evaluate them. They don’t know how to evaluate these European scales of A1, A2, B1, B2. It doesn’t tell them anything on the language needed to perform the tasks well and be part of the team at the workplace.And because “fluent Finnish” doesn’t mean anything for the recruiters, it doesn’t mean much more to the people applying. Everyone has a different opinion on “what is a good level of Finnish”, it’s subjective. Many also use that word “good” because there aren’t many ways to say what they want to say, and don’t know how else they can evaluate their own language skills or an employee’s. But in my opinion, it is very wrong to just write “good” or “excellent” every time instead of describing, because it doesn’t say anything to anyone, employer or employees.I’ve been in situations where I have recommended someone for an interview who in my opinion had “a good Finnish level”, and at the end of the interview the recruiter would tell me “no that person doesn’t have a good enough level of Finnish”, when for me it was really good.“Fluent” level depends on the perception and the personal experience of each person who is supposed to evaluate it. And it shouldn’t. And that’s why recruiters should have a professional ability to actually evaluate language skills, or they should at least receive some kind of training so that they could have an objective understanding of someone’s skills. An interview, a recruitment, a work relationship there is a reciprocity, it’s not only one person’s responsibility.

Networking has been, in our project, one of the main points that we encouraged people to develop. How much does Finnish language influence networks’ building? It depends a lot on what kind of person you are and who you are networking with. I’ve been working a lot with refugees and asylum seekers. When you live in the receptions centers, you have one network, and the rest of your networks expand when one of your own contact creates links with the society and takes you along with them. For example, one person becomes a volunteer for the parish, then takes a friend with him/her, then the parish organizes an event, where 10 other friends will join. The libraries were also a very big networking place, where new people would join every time. So there, Finnish of course would be helping to communicate with the Finnish people present/working there and we would in return expand our own networks by connecting with them and then connecting them to others. We would especially connect them where they were saying they were needing more contacts or networks, and the Finnish speakers that already knew them would be some sort of mediator. For the people who didn’t speak any Finnish, they would just tag along, and they would still be able to participate to some activities, even without any language skills. But it was always that person who spoke Finnish who would be the “leader” or who would take the others along with him/her. He/she would be the one speaking or asking questions but would take his/her friends and translate. It is possible to network without Finnish but again, it’s always the same topic: how do you present yourself? How do you sell yourself? How much are other people able to see themselves building up a relationship with you, regardless of your language skills?

How much do you think that not speaking Finnish can affect someone’s well-being?It depends of course on so many different factors. Your financial situation, your education level, the reason you have come to Finland… If you speak English or not, or Swedish or not … A lot of things can affect that. But I think that the biggest point is that each person has their own person, personality and resilience. How are your general tolerance towards change? In my opinion asylum seekers are a very good example, when you think about their state of mind, mental health and well-being when they arrive here and how they live in the reception centers. There they receive the exact same amount of money, the same support and services. For some people it will take 2 years to learn Finnish for another it can last 4 years even though that person is in a better state of mind, more positive. It depends on such individual factors.

This is a very interesting and important answer. In our project, especially when we received participants for advice or individual sessions, one of the most common question was “do you really think I need to speak Finnish”? “How long do you think it’s going to take for me to learn Finnish”? Because people need a timeline to plan their life, they need some sort of milestones. The research has shown that it takes 10 years to learn Finnish fluently, to become fluent. I don’t think that you can have a native level of course but yes, complete fluency, “perfection”.

Do you have the same stats on how long it takes to speak “good enough”? Can we talk about the YKI test? How long does it take to reach the intermediate level?It depends on the person; I haven’t found stats. I know that among the people I’ve helped, there were some people who would take the YKI test after one year and would get it. It can take several years to get to a “B” level for some when it can be extremely quick for others. What also matters is what you can actually do with the language, not only your level.

What do you think, concretely, that someone should write on their resume to talk about their language level?I have a friend who used to work at an integration school, and there they help people write their resume and cover letters. I asked her what they would write and she said that they would always put the official levels (A1, A2, B1). And I told her that no one would understand that! But that’s the guidelines that they used and received. You should write what you can do: write (sentences, an email, a report), read (the news, emails, reports), understand (context, precise vocabulary, commands), speak ( with your colleagues, at a meeting, for a presentation) … And then you can take each part of the tasks in the job description and think about how your own Finnish level relates to these tasks.You can also use the description of the European Language level framework (A-B-C levels) and see in these descriptions what you can actually do and use it to describe your own level. The employer is interested in knowing what you can do right away when joining the team.Another important thing is also to mention and communicate about how you can be involved in a Finnish speaking environment. If you have been for example a volunteer in a Finnish speaking organization, this says that you can adapt and function in a team in Finnish.

If you write your resume in Finnish, does it give you more access to an interview?Yes. But you must write it yourself. I’ve been writing resumes and cover letters with a lot of non-Finnish speakers, and I’ve been learning to ask questions to people. Because if you ask people “ok, write about yourself and why you’d be good for the job”, most of the time it seems too much and impossible. But if you ask smaller questions like “where have you been working before”, “what did your last boss say about you” etc., it is a slow process, but then it ensures that people actually talk about themselves with their own words. Then we write the text together. He/she writes, and I help if I see a spelling mistake. But it is very important that it is their own words and wordings that show in the resume or the cover letter. It can’t be someone else’s text. So, if you have a Finnish partner, you can ask your partner to check, but the letter or the resume should be written at your level, with your own words. You must memorize that so when you go to the interview, you will sound the same as what you wrote in that letter. But for the Finnish partner, it is ok to correct, especially the spelling mistakes. Because you’ll never get to the interview if your letter is full of spelling mistakes. The main thing is to get inside the interview so then you can get to sell yourself in person.

What do you think is the main challenge for a Finnish speaker who has a spouse looking for a job but doesn’t speak Finnish?I’ve been myself in that situation and I think the hardest part is to understand the other person’s frustration. Finding a job in Finland is difficult even for Finnish speakers and Finns. The job-hunting and recruitment processes are difficult. It demands a very good understanding of Finnish work culture, skills to read and understand the job offers, skills to know what are the required abilities and know-hows to showcase them, knowing what is the value of your experiences and how to present it at its best. It is very difficult even for people who speak the language! So, when it comes to people who don’t know all this, this culture, don’t speak the language, the Finnish partner becomes the one who has the feeling that they must explain. It’s very stressful for both. One has to explain everything, the other one is very stressed that he or she can’t make phone calls alone, write emails, be autonomous. My advice would be to support your foreign partner as much as you can until they start to work. The Finnish job market works like that, the hardest part is the first step. You have to be known and vouched for to be trusted. Once you enter the job market, you have way more opportunities to create your networks, rely more and more on yourself and be less frustrated.

What do you think about developing multilingual teams? It depends on the field of work. There are a lot of fields where they speak only Finnish and many Finns who don’t speak other languages or enough other languages to actually change their working language to English for example. There are a lot of fields only in Finnish and even the idea that you need to serve some customers in another language is already scary… So, as a working language… A multilingual team might be a solution, in certain sectors. But if you take Finland as a whole, the image of everyone speaking English and being comfortable to work in English is false.How can Finnish colleagues support non-Finnish speakers in the workplace?Finnish speakers should receive an onboarding. How do you take along non-Finnish speakers in the team? How can you work with colleagues who are not Finnish speakers? We’ve talked about “selkosuomi” (Simple Finnish) that is a good help. But you can just start to speak it out of the blue. You need to be trained, it’s not about speaking slowly and loudly. The second thing is that you need to make onboarding material that can be given also to non-Finnish speakers, with a simplified language or images. The main point though is to make sure that this is a two-way process, where the Finnish speakers and the non-Finnish speakers are both involved. Another way would be to have a “supervisor” or a support colleague, who has been trained in language learning at least a little bit and can be the support person in Finnish for the non-Finnish speaker, explain the tasks, the content of meetings etc. How can the non-Finnish speakers use their workplace to improve their language skills?Speak Finnish! Every time there is an opportunity to speak or write in Finnish. Talk to your colleagues first, with people you’re comfortable with. The main thing is that the more you speak the more you get to improve. And on the other hand, it requires you to feel safe with your colleagues to allow yourself to make mistakes without being judged or made fun of.

“Fluent” Finnish is, maybe, in the end, when both sides are responsible and actively communicating with one another.

​Parts of the interview were translated from Finnish to English for the purpose of this article.